2 - Secularizing a Sacred Empire

Summary

Qing relations with other polities within and outside its frontiers were diversified and the Son of Heaven tolerated a plurality of coexisting normative orders within the fictionally supreme hierarchical, correlative cosmology. With the emergence of the treaty system, which had a part in placing the Qing and its tributaries and colonies into new legal categories, the Chinese world order started a process of disintegration that culminated at the beginning of the twentieth century with the foundation of the first republic. This chapter looks at the early translations of international law, and how the sacred space of the Qing Empire began secularization through a new understanding of space, as expressed in the new atlas. Translation here was not a passive act; the way “sovereignty” was translated by Qing intellectuals and geographers reflected their active agency. Once the term was translated and a neologism created, its classical etymons in the host language were interrupted, and its meanings and status deeply changed.